Chapter 1
Hell's Kitchen rivals Gotham for average crime rates. It's not quite Crime Alley bad, and there's no overt Rogue counterparts here, but it's still pretty bad.
This isn't even Jason's city, but a week cooped up doing nothing makes the abundance of crime echo into his hollow chest like rage.
It's tempered by the Devil's presence, but what is one man—if he is a man—against the entire underworld?
Not even Batman could manage that alone.
Hell's Kitchen is so similar to Gotham it gives Jason vertigo sometimes. He almost forgets that the gunfire, the screaming, and everything else is not something he can pick up his gun and stop. Not right now. Not when he doesn't know how he got here or how to get back. Hell's Kitchen isn't his, not the way Gotham's worst places were the Red Hood's.
Right now, he's Jason Todd. And Jason Todd doesn't have the tools to start and win a war here, even if he wanted to. Guns help, but what he would really need is information, and he's sorely lacking in it.
Besides, he wants to focus on getting home.
Admittedly, this is difficult to remember once it's dark and the underworld really wakes up. The screaming reminds him too much of Gotham, and it makes him unexpectedly angry. Maybe it should be expected, but that makes it no less inconvenient. He knows better than to indulge himself when he gets like this, because if he kills someone—and hell, he wants to kill someone—there's no telling where he'll stop.
In Gotham, that means a lecture from Bruce and disapproving eyebrows from Dick and a horribly disappointed Look from Alfred.
Here, Jason doesn't know what the consequences are, and he doesn't want to find out just yet.
So when it feels like too much to handle, he steps into the first bar he sees and hopes the ambient noise will block it all out. It works, kind of. He can't hear the screams anymore, but knowing they're there raises the hair on his neck.
He banishes the guilt with a beer. It's not remotely a good beer, but it does its job. He drinks one more, decides that getting drunk is possibly a bad idea when his self control is hanging by a thread, and heads back to the apartment complex in a sour mood.
His ratty sleeping bag affords neither heat nor cushion from the concrete floor. Jason has slept in worse conditions, including the distant pop of gunfire, but it's slow coming tonight.
He dozes between heartbeats, seconds at a time. His paranoia allows nothing less, even though the background noise is all shit he should be used to.
Jason wonders if the others are looking for him. He wonders if they care that he's gone. Maybe, Jason thinks bitterly to himself, Bruce will have another Robin by the time I'm back.
If he makes it back at all.
—
"You good, man?"
Jason blinks, snapped out of his daze. Cereal boxes come into focus in front of him. He says something intelligent, like "huh?" The speaker—blond, long-ish hair, unreasonably concerned eyes—raises his eyebrows.
"Oh," Jason says. He shakes his head a little, cursing his lack of awareness. "I'm fine. Thanks."
"Are you sure?" Concerned Stranger asks. "You looked a bit like that cereal murdered your dad."
Jason snorts. "If only," He mutters, and flashes a charming smile at Concerned Stranger. "Nah, I'm good. Long night, you know how it is."
Concerned Stranger looks a little less concerned. "Yeah," He says. "Work, or…?"
Jason blows out a sigh, grabbing the least offensively-colored box off the shelf. "Insomnia." He waves it off, like 'what can you do?' "Runs in the family."
Ain't even a lie. All the bats are nocturnal by now. Jason almost feels sorry for the ones still in school, except it's a lot more fun to laugh at them.
"Sucks," Concerned Stranger says. He's… surprisingly genuine, for someone from Hell's Kitchen. Jason would hate for him to be in something shady, but chances are he is.
"Yeah," Jason says. He deliberates for a second, and sticks out his hand. "Jason."
Concerned Stranger takes it with a smile. "Foggy."
—
Jason looks up 'Foggy' later and finds jackshit. It didn't sound like a real name, but you never know what parents will inflict on their children, so he hadn't asked. He wonders what the chances are that one of the librarians knows the guy.
He decides against asking. It's fine. What's not fine is getting mugged four blocks from the apartment complex. In broad daylight.
This place really is like Gotham, Jason thinks. It's been forever since someone tried to mug him; the novelty of it means he nearly gets shot. 'Nearly' is not even close to good enough. Jason disarms the guy and dumps him on his ass, but not before the idiot gets a few lucky punches in.
Jason breaks the guy’s arm, because he's petty like that. The face is off-fucking-limits, this is why Jason wears a goddamn helmet. So of course the first fight he's in he gets nailed in the face.
Maybe Jason should've tried to de-escalate by letting the guy know he's got, like, five dollars after grocery shopping today. But he doubts the guy would've walked away, so why bother?
Bruce wouldn't be happy about it. That absolves him of any guilt that may or may not have been present.
Jason takes the guy's gun—you can never have too many—and finishes the trek to his current 'home'.
Police sirens whine a few blocks away. He wonders if they're for his would-be mugger or one of the thirty other crimes that were probably happening at the same time. It doesn't matter; at least half the cops are dirty anyway.
Rage curls around his spine like creeping ivy, fed by the thought. Jason swears quietly and eats his damn cereal.
—
Slowly but surely, Hell’s Kitchen is suffocating him. Jason wants to curl up in his ratty sleeping bag and never move again. He wants to fall asleep and wake up in his own bed like this never happened.
He wants to step up and fucking do something for Hell’s Kitchen. The whole reason he became the Red Hood—aside from trying to kill Bruce—was to make Gotham better. And the Devil is trying, but shit. Gotham was bad with a revolving door of vigilantes, and Hell’s Kitchen has the one.
Every time Jason goes to the library or the store or just out on the streets, these thoughts turn into bands around his lungs, and they’re getting tighter every day.
It’s the second mugging that really trips him up, though. He was cocky enough before the first to think he could leave his guns at home, and he’s learned from that. So when this guy pulls a gun, Jason pulls one right back.
He stares, deadeyed. His face feels numb. His fingers feel twitchy. “You don’t want to do that,” He says roughly. “You walk away right now, and you live.”
They stare at each other for a long moment. The mugger backs off. Jason watches him go and finds that the bands around his lungs are tighter than ever. Physically, Jason is sure he can breathe. But it doesn’t feel like he can breathe, so he tucks his gun away and tries to hold off on a complete breakdown.
He finds the closest building with roof access and takes the stairs in twos and threes, and doesn’t feel the bands loosen until his back is to a wall and he can see out over the other buildings.
It’s not a familiar skyline, but the view is one he’s used to. How many times has he staked out gang headquarters from spots like this? He’s up high and he’s out of sight, just like he likes it.
His paranoia is growing… rampant. It’s feeding his rage and it’s hindering his ability to seem normal in public. He knows it will lessen if he goes out as Red Hood, but that’s… a last resort, if he can help it. If he can’t…
Well. The Red Hood’s debut might start with a murder or two. If it does, it better be a damn good one.
Jason pauses. He can practically hear Dick saying, “Murder is never the answer.” He bites his his tongue, reevaluates. He can do shoulders, hands, and knees. It’s how he’s operated with the bats for a while now. Sure, maybe murder is the answer sometimes, but if he goes out looking for a reason to kill somebody, he’s gonna find it. Whether it’s there or not.
And then he’ll have to deal with the Devil. That’s not exactly something he wants to do. Maybe Jason could take him, maybe not, and he’s not keen to figure it out.
Priority one is getting home. Which makes subpriority one seeing if SHIELD is still around, and if they are, hacking whatever’s left. They were holding all the cards not too long ago, from what he understands.
If SHIELD still has their fingers in as many pies as they did when they were exposed, they have to have something on dimensional travel. In the meantime, Jason is stuck picking through what’s still on the internet.
The Black Widow really could’ve been more strategic about that. She burned everyone—herself included—and Jason’s pretty sure at least some of them didn’t deserve it.
Isn’t she supposed to be some crazy Russian super-spy? Then again, Jason wasn’t exactly there, or even in this universe to begin with when it happened, and it’s easy to say what should’ve been done better from the outside of things.
He’ll reserve judgment for now.
—
A week of the same puts Jason back at the bar. He’s ever closer to homicidal rage and the beer doesn’t help, exactly, but it lowers his stress levels just a touch.
He’s going out tomorrow. The Red Hood’s first official appearance. He’s made up his mind, because he’s going to lose it if he doesn’t get some real information soon.
The Avengers are a mess. They’re big shit superheroes, Justice League big. They’re not on par with the Justice League, but they work with large-scale threats rather than street level. Or they did until they had a slap fight over some government control play.
It’s not Jason’s problem. Jason’s problem is that Dr. Banner seems to be the one who handled the tesseract-cube-thing the most, and as far as anyone knows, he’s off-world. Which is just peachy, since the cube created a portal and that sounds about like what Jason needs.
So the Red Hood is going to take a huge damn risk and pay Tony Stark a visit.
Jason is allergic to asking for help on the best of days, and since it’s looking like he’ll have to ask a stranger for it, he’s not in the best of moods when someone sits next to him at the bar. The ‘someone’ is a man with a cane and red-tinted glasses—blind.
“Hey,” The guy says, low and quiet. It makes something in the back of Jason’s mind bristle. He sounds like Nightwing when Jason’s had a bad night. "You-"
“Woah, woah,” Foggy interrupts, coming up behind the guy. Jason double-takes. Foggy double-takes right back.
“Foggy?”
“Jason?”
The blind guy’s eyebrows shoot up. “Foggy, you know him?”
Foggy shrugs, a little helplessly. “Kinda? I mean, we met once. Matt, this is Jason—Jason, this is my firm partner, Matthew Murdock.”
Matt offers a hand. “Nice to meet you.”
Jason shakes it. “Yeah, you too. Firm partner?”
“We’re lawyers,” Foggy explains. “Nelson and Murdock, if you’ve ever heard of it?” He looks hopeful, but not expectant.
Jason feels a little bad anyways. “Uh, no. But I haven’t been in town long.” After a period of ambiguous silence, Jason tries, “So, did you need something?”
Matt doesn’t say anything for a long moment. “Well,” He starts.
“Matty’s just after a free drink,” Foggy interrupts again, grinning with a sudden, unholy glee. “You wouldn’t believe how many people try to chat up the blind guy at bars.”
Jason’s eyebrows jump on a seesaw with Matt’s—his go up, Matt’s go down. Matt elbows Foggy, glaring a little too far to the left. “Seriously?” He says.
Jason looks Matt over more closely. Suit, combed hair. Bit of scruff. Put-together, in a messy sort of way. “Hate to turn down a good-looking guy like you,” He says dryly. “But I’m a solo drinker. Otherwise I get into all sorts’a stupid shit.”
“Aw, poor Matt,” Foggy says happily.
“Shut up,” Matt mutters. “Hey, Josie—two beers when you get a second.”
Jason fights a laugh. “Playboy?” He aims it at Foggy.
“Oh, you don’t know the half of it," Foggy says, widening his eyes for emphasis. “Somehow he always knows who the pretty ones are.”
“You callin’ me pretty?” Jason asks, highly amused.
Matt tilts his head, a curious smile on his face. “Are you not?”
“I definitely am,” Jason assures him. “Your pretty-radar is intact.”
“Good to know,” Matt says.
“He’s got wicked hair,” Foggy adds for his friend’s benefit. “Bleached streak at the front, total bad boy look.”
Jason does laugh now. He knocks back the rest of his beer and stands, stretching.
“Leaving already?”
“Ah, yeah,” Jason says. “Been here a while. Good to see you again though, Foggy. Catch you later?”
Foggy grins. “Yeah.”
—
Foggy rounds on Matt. "What was that?"
"He had a gun, Foggy."
Foggy presses the heels of his palms against his eyes. "Uh, yeah. Yeah, Matt, plenty of people in Hell's Kitchen do."
"Sure," Matt agrees, a little frustration in his voice. "But none of them are so… Jason is really angry."
Foggy frowns. “At us?”
Matt shakes his head. “He was angry before we walked in. You helped—whenever you talked, his heart rate went down a little.”
“You think he’s planning something?” Foggy looks toward the door.
“Maybe. I don’t know. People don’t tend to make the best decisions when they’re intoxicated and upset.”
“You gonna follow him?”
Matt sighs. “... no. He was angry, but not volatile. Did he say anything when you first met?”
Foggy shakes his head. “Just that he’d been having trouble sleeping. I mean, I saw him on the street a few days later and he had a hell of a black eye, but he didn’t see me and we didn’t talk.”
“Alright, well. Keep an eye out if you can?”
“Yeah,” Foggy says, troubled. “Yeah, of course.”